Instagram's 300M Milestone: User Count Now Eclipses That of Twitter

Instagram now has 300 million active users, making it bigger than Twitter, which has 284 million.

"Over the past four years, what began as two friends with a dream has grown into a global community that shares more than 70 million photos and videos each day," the company announced on its blog Wednesday.

Instagram was purchased by Facebook in April 2012 for a cool $1 billion. Earlier this year, Facebook also purchased text messaging app WhatsApp for $19 billion. Altogether, Facebook has 1.3 billion users, WhatsApp has 600 million, and Instagram has 300 million.

"We're seeing a lot of people coming in the fashion world, a lot of people coming in, in the youthful teens world, and a lot of people internationally as well," CEO Kevin Systrom said in an interview with CNBC.

Systrom explained that despite the milestone, growth is still a top priority for the company.

Asked for comment about surpassing Twitter's user metrics, he said, "I think it's hard to compare Twitter and Instagram. Twitter has a more mature business. They're public. We've just started monetizing. We have a lot to prove before we're, you know, worth many billions of dollars."

Along with the announcement, Instagram said it was introducing verified badges for celebrities, athletes, and brands to make sure users know they're following the real George W. Bush, for example.